When very bad movies happen to very good actors

Perhaps they are coerced by their agents. Maybe they feel obligations to friends or former associates. Or maybe it’s just because they need the quick money.

Whatever the reason, the fact remains that a lot of extremely talented people wind up in some truly awful movies.

I was thinking about this two weeks ago when I was watching an alleged comedy called “The Best and the Brightest” (the title, as it turned out, was a double lie). The movie is a lame, limp satire of status-seeking parents who will stop at nothing to get their kids enrolled in a prestigious Manhattan kindergarten; it’s the kind of material that might have been timely in the late 1980s or early 1990s, but seems about as fresh as a Tonya Harding joke these days.

“Brightest” features Neil Patrick Harris, who is not only one of the best comic actors around, but also a first-rate musical performer, as anyone who saw the Tony Awards or the recent broadcast of Stephen Sondheim’s star-studded revival of “Company” can attest. In this project, he’s an oasis of class and control while nearly everyone else around him stomps around screaming, mugging and spitting out profanity-peppered wisecracks that are sorely lacking in wisdom.

It’s almost painful to watch someone of Harris’ caliber drowning in a cesspool of rancid comedy, but I thought, “I’m sure he’ll have better luck with his next film. It couldn’t get any worse, right?”

Ladies and gentlemen, this weekend Neil Patrick Harris stars in — take a deep breath — “The Smurfs.” If God is merciful, I will never actually have to see if he’s any good in “The Smurfs”; if the trailer is any indication, however, “The Best and the Brightest” may soon look like the good old days.

But Harris is hardly the only light being smothered under a bushel. Examine, if you dare, the tragic career trajectory of Kate Hudson. The daughter of Goldie Hawn soared to fame in 2000’s “Almost Famous,” playing the good-hearted groupie with twinkling eyes and a sly smile. Audiences were bewitched, a star was born and then ... .

Remember “How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days,” her 2003 comedy with Matthew McConaughey? Well, it wasn’t that bad, and it made a lot of money, which is more than can be said for “Alex & Emma,” “Le Divorce,” “Raising Helen” and “The Skeleton Key.” Aside from a second banana role in “You, Me and Dupree,” Hudson didn’t have another hit until she reteamed with McConaughey in the fairly awful “Fool’s Gold” in 2008.

Now, thanks to the inexplicable success of “Bride Wars,” in which she played a maniac rushing to the altar, Hudson has become Hollywood’s go-to girl for nastiness. In the unwatchable “Something Borrowed,” she seemed to be aping her mom’s performance as a vengeful backstabber in “Death Becomes Her”; the difference is that Hawn was great in that part, while Hudson is merely grating. She can still put on a terrific show in a supporting role — check out her vivacious song-and-dance routine in “Nine,” or her strong work in “The Killer Inside Me"”— but she desperately needs to avoid any more snippy, sneering spoiled brat roles. (At least she’s not in “The Smurfs.”)

Talk to people who are trying to make a living as actors and they’ll tell you it’s a brutal business. This is not news: It always has been and probably always will be. And I’m sure when the rent is due and the car is about to be repossessed, any job begins to look like a prime opportunity.

Reflect for a moment on the case of Michael Caine, who was known as the man who couldn’t say no throughout much of the 1980s. Months after winning a best supporting actor Oscar for “Hannah and Her Sisters,” he was starring in the megabomb “Jaws: The Revenge,” a movie he now laughs off in interviews. “I have never seen it, but by all accounts, it is terrible,” he told a reporter years ago. “However, I have seen the house that it built, and it is terrific.”

Unfortunately, most of us only know that the undoubtedly marvelous mansion was paid for with a great big chunk of a gifted actor’s artistic credibility.